Written by Sharon Grigsby at Dallas Morning News
The final structure at the modest stadium where Baylor University played football for more than 60 years — many of them inglorious losing seasons — was demolished last Saturday. All the Baylor football games I ever attended were at Floyd Casey Stadium; we had some fun dead-of-night parties in its massive parking lot.
I’m one of those who thinks the most glorious of Baylor’s athletic days may well have been at Floyd Casey. With the move to shiny McLane Stadium has come troubling “football as king” problems that Baylor was never associated with in the past.
The accusations of violent behavior by football players — and the abdication of leadership by those at Baylor who are charged with putting their students’ well being and safety above all else — are so many that it’s difficult to keep track of them all.
Here is the bottom line: At this point, a pattern of sexual assault accusations and the shoddy handling of them at the university in recent years is well documented and indefensible. As a first step to rectifying this tragedy, our editorial page has called on the university to release every page of the investigative report. That would begin the process of restoring credibility and trust that things will change.
Meanwhile, the accusations continue to grow. Among the latest, reported by Outside the Lines reporters Paula Lavigne and Mark Schlabach, is evidence that at least one individual in the Waco Police Department attempted to keep potentially bad news about a football player out of the computer system. This is the same police department thatdidn’t bring charges against Baylor player Sam Ukwuachu in fall 2013; thanks to a persistent assistant DA, Ukwuachu was tried — and convicted — of sexual assault the following fall. It appears that the Baylor football program was fully aware of what was going on in both incidents.
At this point, as a fellow alum noted in an email to me today, the “sins of the past” are indisputable and we need to worry not so much about history and focus more on getting this mess fixed.
I mostly agree with that, although I think each accusation is consequential. After all, with every new allegation, I am less convinced that top coaches and administration didn’t know what was going on. I hope I’m wrong, but it strains credulity to think this many incident reports were all happening without Coach Art Briles or President Kenneth Starr knowing anything about them.
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